Sept. 20, 1952: Kitchen Blender Pegs DNA as Stuff of Life

Alfred Hershey was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969. He shared the prize with two other American scientists for "discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses."
Photo: Bettmann / CORBIS

1952: Geneticists Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase publish the findings of their so-called blender experiments, which conclude that DNA is where life's hereditary data is found.

Prior to these experiments, so named because they were conducted using a regular kitchen blender, it was generally believed that proteins — not DNA — were the genetic stuff of life.

Using the blender, Hershey and Chase separated the protein coating from the nuclei of bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. Injecting nucleic acid into the bacterial cell, they found that it was the acid itself, and not the protein, that caused the transmission of genetic information.

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Their conclusion was that genes are made of the nucleic acid DNA.

Hershey would subsequently share the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in discovering the properties of DNA. But Chase, who served as Hershey's lab assistant during his experiments and whose name appears on the paper, was snubbed.

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